3.8m DTT receivers sold in 2006

3.8m digital terrestrial set top boxes were sold during 2006, according to GfK sales figures.

The number tops the number of sales achieved in 2005 by 200,000, despite a slight drop in the number of sales in the traditionally strong fourth quarter when comparing 2006 to 2005 (1.4m and 1.52m respectively).

The number of integrated sets sold increased dramatically year-on-year, with 2.4m sets sold during 2006 compared to under 0.9m in 2005. In the fourth quarter of 2006, 41% of all digital terrestrial sales were integrated digital TVs.

Ofcom has noted that a divergence between the number of DTT devices purchased and DTT homes is due to sets with integrated DTT tuners being purchased by homes taking satellite or cable as their main multichannel platform and because more people are upgrading older DTT equipment to take advantage of PVR functionality.